Thursday, 29 January 2015

Critical Perspectives 11: 4/12/14 - Considering the “Other”, with Alex Franklin

Prep for Semester 2
Content: Assessed Work:
  • Blog → Plays the role of a sketchbook (what are you INTERESTED in?)
  • Poster → 2pm Feb 9th
  • Essay → 26th March
Assessed on these three things en masse
After Xmas break:
Seminars – program-specific → uses stuff from the blog
Leading up to poster

No hard-and-fast rules for the blog – just ongoing engagement
Reference EVERYTHING!!! (citations)
Have a critical perspectives folder!

Find a way to manage all this – don't get hung up on the essay
Better to have too much and edit it down
The seminars will help you write it
Use the UWE Harvard reference system – practice using it on your blog

One set title: “Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text”
Identify a cultural text you want to know more about
Find one with a representation of an idea you want to explore
The “Anaconda” video is a cultural text! Not just written texts
Critical =/= negative; how and why things work

Resist the urge to boomerang back to familiar territory – you're here to learn NEW things
You can mention other texts (contrast) but don't go into detail
Identify the broader issue

Poster – inherently tied to your essay
Will be discussed in the seminars
All posters will be exhibited in February!
Posters in this context are junior versions of academic presentations

Seminars are at Bower Ashton – NOT Ashton Court
x1 hour session a week (Thurs.) except 22nd Jan and 12th Feb
SHOULD be on online timetable
There WILL be prep for seminars – tasks (see Blackboard)
Seminars make university university – STEEL YOURSELF; take part
A kind of luxury item – builds confidence

Office Hours will be posted after Christmas
Talk to a librarian about research


1. “Who are you?”
What's the most important aspect of you? How did you learn that?
Our expected place in the world shaped by our families – but family's a cultural construct (culturally specific*)
Cultural forms – our expectations of our own and others' identities
Foucault: “there's no such thing as a natural body”
*arbitrary but not meaningless

2. “Who are we?”
Who are we talking about? Collective, shared identity
The state/country you're born into affects how the world sees you
Whiteness is a standard – the “norm”; anything else is seen as a racialized identity
“Culture” is almost something that happens to other people”

3. “Who is the other?”
“Them and us” - meaningly polarization
“Them” = a projection onto those who are not “us”, usually not based on first-hand experience
Stereotyping is a practice – it requires repetition
“[Stereotyping is] a form of symbolic violence” - Pierre Bordieu
Absence; condemnation; trivialisation – 3 different strategies (Gaye Tuchman, 1978)
Exoticisation + infantilisation

In your essay, don't use terms like “we” and “us” without explaining – this lecture deconstructs that (also avoid “the public”)
Recognise the power system; the process of “othering” - as both a creator and a consumer

Understand the impact of your cultural texts – be a conscious maker

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